EA has revealed it had to remove a GTA spoof level of The Simpsons Game after Rockstar asked to be taken down.
"I was always under the impression that when you do parody, it's a sign of respect... If we make fun of Grand Theft Auto, we're not going to hurt the sales of Grand Theft Auto... But yeah, we've definitely had some reactions - we've had to pull stuff from the game," The Simpsons lead designer Greg Rizzer revealed to CVG.
Rizzer revealed that at this year's Games Convention in Leipzig, someone at Rockstar took offence at a poster for 'Grand Theft Scratchy', one of the levels in the game, and asked that it be taken down.
But not every company felt the same way after seeing its franchise being parodied in The Simpsons Game.
"I don't know if you've seen Sitar Hero? We did Apu playing this 60-button controller and songs like Pour Some Curry On Me" said Rizzer. "We made this wonderful parody poster and the guys from Harmonix loved it and we sent them 20 copies of the poster. They just loved it so much."
Unfortunately, Activision’s Red Octane is the publisher of Guitar Hero so even if Harmonix was cool with the spoof, its publisher could still follow Rockstar’s way.
http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/14727/...ve-GTA-Parody/